Being is both presence and absence. God had to conceal His presence in order to bring the world into being. He had to make His absence possible in order to make room for the world's presence. Coming into being brought along denial and defiance, absence, oblivion and resistance.
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Ch. 5Abraham Joshua Heschel
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In nature, it is divinity, rather than history, which Thomas responds to most. ... Thomas finds the God of nature elusive, but when He reveals Himself, he does so through the natural world. God’s reflection, His shadow, and His echo exist in the Welsh hills. His influence there is both a presence and an absence (and, at times, an absence that is like a presence).
R. S. Thomas
Human life is thus only a perpetual illusion; men deceive and flatter each other. No one speaks of us in our presence as he does of us in our absence. Human society is founded on mutual deceit; few friendships would endure if each knew what his friend said of him in his absence, although he then spoke in sincerity and without passion. Man is then only disguise, falsehood, and hypocrisy, both in himself and in regard to others. He does not wish any one to tell him the truth; he avoids telling it to others, and all these dispositions, so removed from justice and reason, have a natural root in his heart. 100
Blaise Pascal
True peace is not merely the absence of tension: it is the presence of justice.
Martin Luther King
It appears that my presence would be most efficacious by its absence. (to the other actors on the set of Deliverance after being basked to leave)
James Dickey
Your absence of mind we have borne, till your presence of body came to be called in question by it.
Charles Lamb
Heschel, Abraham Joshua
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